The present invention relates to a laser waterfowl repellent. Waterfowl such as geese and ducks are beautiful to observe from a distance. However, they are often a nuisance when they “graze” on one's yard, particularly, when they leave large deposits of feces behind. Geese, in particular, are stubborn animals. If they are chased away, more often than not, they will return over and over again. Studies have shown that migratory waterfowl are responsible for international spread of Avian flu. As such, it has become important to avoid contact with these wild animals.
Even in this day and age, solutions to the problems of nuisance waterfowl are few and far between. Chemical repellents are often used in grassy areas to make the grass unpalatable for eating waterfowl. Such chemicals are useless when trying to keep waterfowl off a dock, pier or other non-grassy area.
Noisemakers are often used, particularly at airports, to control when large waterfowl and other birds take off to best avoid having them sucked into gas turbine engines with the resultant engine failure. However, employing a device in a residential neighborhood that emits large blasts of sound is not the most neighborly thing to do. Other possible solutions to rid areas of nuisance waterfowl include placement of fake owls, installation of inflatable balloons having large eyes printed thereon, and barriers that preclude the waterfowl from entering areas where such restriction is desired. Animals such as border collies are also employed, but it is expensive to obtain and care for them.
In the case of barriers, they also make those areas inhospitable for people who must traverse the barriers to enter the area. It is also known that devices such as fake owls, inflatable balloons and fake inflatable snakes only deter waterfowl for short periods of time unless they are continually moved to different locations and orientations.
It is generally known to use laser energy to disperse waterfowl. A website at www.birdcontrolsupplies.com sells a “Bird Phazer PRO Laser” which basically consists of a hand-held laser beam generating device, battery powered, that may be used in the user's hand to shine a laser beam on the offending waterfowl to disperse them. Such a device, while generally effective, requires the presence of the user manipulating it.
In the particular situation of a floating dock, typically, the waterfowl enter onto the dock sometime after dusk and leave sometime before dawn. During these hours, it is often inconvenient for a property owner to use a hand-held device to disperse the waterfowl. Thus, a need has developed for a device that may effectively repel waterfowl and that does not require the presence of the property owner to do so.
It is with these issues in mind that the present invention was developed.
The concept of the laser beam generating device is extremely well known as of this date. Laser beam generating devices commonly generate laser beams of either red or green color. Red colored laser beams are at the edge of the visible light spectrum for humans and most animals. As such, when a red colored laser beam is generated, typically, all that may be seen is a dot where the beam impinges on a solid surface. By contrast, green colored laser beams are more toward the middle of the visible spectrum. What this means is that when a green colored laser beam is activated, not only is a dot visible on a solid surface where the beam impinges, at night, the beam emanating from the generator is also somewhat visible. The visibility of the entire beam from the source to where it impinges on a solid surface has been found to be an advantageous feature when attempting to disperse and repel waterfowl.
Laser beams may be split into a plurality of separate beams by any known means such as fiberoptic beam splitters, prisms, mirrors or some combination of these devices. The following U.S. patents teach various kinds of optical light beam splitters:
U.S. Pat. No. 6,084,717 to Wood et al.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,381,073 to Wilson
U.S. Pat. No. 6,609,815 to Waibel et al.